r8i.xlarge

Analysis

The r8i.xlarge is a memory optimized instance in the r8i series with 4 vCPUs and 32 GiB of memory on Intel Xeon Scalable (Granite Rapids) (up to 3.9 GHz), which makes it memory-heavy at 8 GiB of memory per vCPU.

Within the same generation and size, the r8g.xlarge on AWS Graviton4 costs $0.2356/hour, 15% less ($30.81 a month), though switching means rebuilding software for arm64. The other variants are the r8i-flex.xlarge at $0.2639, the r8gd.xlarge at $0.2939 and the r8a.xlarge at $0.3195.

Running it in N. Virginia instead of São Paulo saves $121 a month per instance: $0.2778/hour against $0.4432/hour, a 60% spread.

On demand it costs $0.2778/hour in US East (N. Virginia), $203 a month if left running, which puts it mid-table for memory optimized types at the 31st percentile per vCPU ($0.0695 per vCPU-hour) and the 44th percentile per GiB ($0.00868 per GiB-hour).

Compared with the previous generation, it costs 5.0% more than the r7i.xlarge on Intel Xeon Scalable (Sapphire Rapids) ($9.67 more a month per instance), in exchange for the newer processor.

Looking beyond its own line, 14 of 45 current types with 4 vCPUs and similar memory are cheaper. The cheapest of those is the r6g.xlarge on AWS Graviton2 at $0.2016/hour.